CPO
heralds the first complete recording of Schreker’s 1929-32 three-act opera, Der Schmied von Gent. Smee, a Ghentish
smith, falls upon hard times on account of his resistance to Spanish
occupation, makes a pact with the Devil and is restored to prosperity. When his
seven years are up, he manages the fruits of good works to evade his fate and
is thereby, despite St Peter’s initial adamant refusal, admitted to Heaven.

The
imposing opening bars, an audible curtain raiser poised somewhere between Neue Sachlichkeit and Hollywood, mark a
call to attention. Closed, sometimes neo-Baroque, forms tend to be the rule:
more Hindemith than Strauss. Many of the thirty-four scenes have their own
generating formal principle, for example a haunting downward scale at the
opening of the third act. Alto saxophone weaves its obbligato way on a number
of occasions, suggestive of its time, if less strikingly so than, say, in Berg.
One may, if one will, play guess the influence. There are, unsurprisingly, Meistersinger-ish echoes in counterpoint
and folksiness.Hindemith’s Cardillac seems an obvious precursor.
Busoni comes to mind – the sale of Smee’s soul inevitably suggesting Doktor Faust – but he often does in
music of this period; much may be correspondence rather than influence.

The
subtitle ‘grosse Zauberoper’ courts comparison with The Magic Flute and Die Frau
ohne Schatten, kinship most obvious in scenes such as that when Smee meets
the Holy Family. There is no
gainsaying the compositional craft, whether in terms of orchestration,
counterpart, or convincing harmonic progression.That said, Schreker’s score expresses general
situation better than character, for whatever the gentle melancholy of his
second-act soliloquy, ‘Schöne Bäum’ draußen am Kai,’ Smee is no Hans Sachs. Yet
if not necessarily operatic gold, nor is this corn.

Vocal
performances tend to competence rather than inspiration, Oliver Zwarg’s Smee an
intelligent, finely-sung cut above the generality. Frank Beermann conducts with
formal clarity, though one could imagine a more propulsive account.

Janine
Ortiz contributes a thorough, informative booklet note, though the translation
is often Google-like. ‘If one considers the note reserves, then it is striking
that they involve an eleven-note theme,’ means nothing unless one is in a
position to read the original. The libretto would have benefited from better
proof-reading: some words appear to be missing completely, for example during
the second and twelfth scenes, whereas what I assume to be performance cuts go
unacknowledged in the written text.

My
appetite was certainly whetted to see the opera in the theatre. Herewith a
glimmer of an artist-opera Konzept: portray
Smee’s intial destitution in the light of the Great Depression, the Spanish
occupying forces in SA uniforms, the diabolical pact as collaboration, and
Heaven as a form of inner emigration.

Lohengrin, the fourth instalment in Marek
Janowski’s Wagner series, arrives in a finely detailed recording. A principal glory
of this performance is the precision of its chorus: one really hears Wagner’s
contrapuntal ingenuity here and in the orchestra, which sounds less monolithic
than is often the case. Janowski highlights shifting instrumental timbres as
well as harmony to signal presentiments, for instance during the second act’s
first scene, of Alberich’s world and plight. Rhythmic exactitude, such as
during the build up to first-act combat, also proves a victor. Details of
high-lying violin figuration emerge more clearly than I can recall, fascinating
from an analytical standpoint, though such hyper-clarity arguably militates
against Wagner’s intention, as in those performances of Strauss’s Don Juan in which technical virtuosity tarnishes
the wash of sound. The general sonority of the Berlin RSO veers oddly, without
obvious reason, between old-German depth, if not quite to the extent one hears
from Barenboim’s Staatskapelle, and a lighter, Mendelssohnian approach.

This set’s other principal attraction
is the unearthly Lohengrin of Klaus Florian Vogt; the role might have been
written for him, possessed of a Heldentenor’s
tonal weight but the lyrical beauty of a Tamino. Vogt’s admirers – there are a
few nay-sayers – will require this recording for that reason alone. Alas, much other
singing pales by comparison, both with Vogt and with artists of the past.
Annette Dasch’s Elsa and Gerd Grochowski’s Telramund are at best distinguished
by Lieder-like attention to detail,
but both can tend to dryness and fail to soar. Susanne Resmark’s Ortrud is
often squally and imprecise of intonation and diction.

Oddly, however, the ‘live
recording’ evinces little sense of the concert hall, let alone the theatre,
drawing attention to the ideological intent of the series, born of Janowski’s
dissatisfaction with contemporary Regietheater.
A reactionary imperative to rescue Wagner from his and our troublesome politics
is betrayed by remarks from the orchestra’s dramaturge, Steffen Georgi: ‘from
today’s perspective, Wagner the theatre-reformist pales into near-insignificance
... a very minor revolutionary.’ I can only suggest that he, Janowski, and the
speaker of the Bundestag, who offers a printed endorsement, take another look
not only at Wagner’s writings, but at the dramas themselves. Whereas the
printed libretto has Lohengrin herald Gottfried as ‘Führer’, Janowski opts for
the evasive ‘Schützer’. There remains a dialectical irony, however, in that the
case of a Wagner recording as CD rather than DVD helps one focus not only upon Wagner’s
music but upon his words. Whatever the intention, my experience was thereby to
hear as strong a warning as I had seen in Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth staging
against the perils of popular attraction to charismatic leadership. Vogt, not coincidentally,
starred in Bayreuth too. Politics will out.